Science Current Events | Science News | Brightsurf.com
 
Email a Friend Send to a friend
Printer Friendly Print World's biggest computing grid launched

World's biggest computing grid launched

October 06, 2008

Batavia, IL and Upton, NY-The world's largest computing grid is ready to tackle mankind's biggest data challenge from the earth's most powerful accelerator. Today, three weeks after the first particle beams were injected into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid combines the power of more than 140 computer centers from 33 countries to analyze and manage more than 15 million gigabytes of LHC data every year.

The United States is a vital partner in the development and operation of the WLCG. Fifteen universities and three U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories from 11 states contribute their power to the project.




"The U.S. has been an essential partner in the development of the vast distributed computing system that will allow 7,000 scientists around the world to analyze LHC data, complementing its crucial contributions to the construction of the LHC," said Glen Crawford of the High Energy Physics program in DOE's Office of Science. DOE and the National Science Foundation support contributions to the LHC and to the computing and networking infrastructures that are an integral part of the project.

U.S. contributions to the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid are coordinated through the Open Science Grid, a national computing infrastructure for science. The Open Science Grid not only contributes computing power for LHC data needs, but also for projects in many other scientific fields including biology, nanotechnology, medicine and climate science.

"Particle physics projects such as the LHC have been a driving force for the development of worldwide computing grids," said Ed Seidel, director of the National Science Foundation's Office of Cyberinfrastructure. "The benefits from these grids are now being reaped in areas as diverse as mathematical modeling and drug discovery."

"Open Science Grid members have put an incredible amount of time and effort in developing a nationwide computing system that is already at work supporting America's 1,200 LHC physicists and their colleagues from other sciences," said Open Science Grid Executive Director Ruth Pordes from DOE's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

Dedicated optical fiber networks distribute LHC data from CERN in Geneva, Switzerland to eleven major "Tier-1" computer centers in Europe, North America and Asia, including those at DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. From these, data is dispatched to more than 140 "Tier-2" centers around the world, including twelve in the United States.

"Our ability to manage data at this scale is the product of several years of intense testing," said Ian Bird, leader of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid project. "Today's result demonstrates the excellent and successful collaboration we have enjoyed with countries all over the world. Without these international partnerships, such an achievement would be impossible."

"When the LHC starts running at full speed, it will produce enough data to fill about six CDs per second," said Michael Ernst, director of Brookhaven National Laboratory's Tier-1 Computing Center. "As the first point of contact for LHC data in the United States, the computing centers at Brookhaven and Fermilab are responsible for storing and distributing a great amount of this data for use by scientists around the country. We've spent years ramping up to this point, and now, we're excited to help uncover some of the numerous secrets nature is still hiding from us."

Physicists in the U.S. and around the world will sift through the LHC data torrent in search of tiny signals that will lead to discoveries about the nature of the physical universe. Through their distributed computing infrastructures, these physicists also help other scientific researchers increase their use of computing and storage for broader discovery.

"Grid computing allows university research groups at home and abroad to fully participate in the LHC project while fostering positive collaboration across different scientific departments on many campuses," said Ken Bloom from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, manager for seven Tier-2 sites in the United States.

Brookhaven National Laboratory



Related Computing Grid Current Events and Computing Grid News Articles Computing Grid Current Events and Computing Grid News RSS Computing Grid Current Events and Computing Grid News RSS
From Sheffield to Singapore, international Grid battles malaria
Malaria kills more than one million people each year, most of them young children living in Africa. Now physicists in the UK have shared their computers with biologists from countries including France and Korea in an effort to combat the disease.

Intelligent sensors gear up for real-time flood monitoring
An intelligent flood monitoring system that could give advance warning of the type of rapid flood that engulfed the UK Cornish village of Boscastle in 2004, is under test in the Yorkshire Dales.

NYU scientists begin second phase of project to better understand disease
A team of researchers at New York University's Center for Comparative Functional Genomics are embarking on the second phase of a collaborative research undertaking to predict structures of key proteins, which in turn shed light on their roles in diseases and offer pathways for cures.

UK grid helps fight avian flu
During April, computers in the UK have been working overtime in the fight against avian flu. As part of an international collaboration, computers at eleven UK universities and research labs have put in one hundred thousand hours of time searching for possible drug components against the avian flu virus H5N1.

LHC Computing Centres Join Forces for Global Grid Challenge
Today, in a significant milestone for scientific grid computing, eight major computing centres successfully completed a challenge to sustain a continuous data flow of 600 megabytes per second (MB/s) on average for 10 days from CERN in Geneva, Switzerland to seven sites in Europe and the US. The total amount of data transmitted during this challenge-500 terabytes-would take about 250 years to download using a typical 512 kilobit per second household broadband connection.

CERN awards the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics for its role in Grid development
In the presence of Minister Letizia Moratti, CERN Director General, Robert Aymar has presented the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) with an award to recognize its contributions to developing computational Grids, and its pioneering efforts to establish and promote Grid technology at the national level and in Europe. The award was presented to Roberto Petronzio, President of INFN, during a ceremony that took place in Rome, at the seat of Ministry of Education, University and Research.

CERN openlab adds a new dimension to Grid computing
Geneva, Switzerland 5 July 2004. The CERN openlab for DataGrid applications, a partnership between CERN , the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and five leading IT companies - Enterasys Networks, HP, IBM, Intel and Oracle - has announced a series of server and storage technical results regarding the first global science Grid - the  Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid project, LCG.  The announcement was made at the recent annual sponsors meeting of the CERN openlab. The openlab partners have demonstrated that a cluster of 40 HP servers running 64-bit Intel® Itanium® 2 processors can be successfully integrated with the LCG, which  involves over 60 major scientific co

CERN recognizes UK's outstanding contribution to Grid computing
CERN's Director General, Dr Robert Aymar, today (June 2nd) formally recognized the UK's exceptional contribution to developing the next generation of computing by presenting awards for outstanding achievement to two British researchers who have been at the forefront of Grid computing at CERN. Dr Aymar also took the opportunity to praise the UK's e-Science programme as a whole, for its pioneering efforts to establish and promote Grid technology at the national level in Europe, efforts which have been a considerable inspiration to other European countries and to the EU. Dr Aymar presented a CERN-UK award for outstanding achievement in Grid development, to Dr Andrew McNab of the University of M

CERN and Caltech set new world record for Internet performance
A team from CERN* and Caltech has set a new Internet2** Land Speed Record by transferring data across nearly 11,000 kilometres at an average rate of 6.25 gigabits per second (Gbps), nearly 10,000 times faster than a typical home broadband connection, from Los Angeles, USA, to Geneva, Switzerland. The Internet2 Land Speed Record (I2-LSR) is an open and ongoing competition for the highest-bandwidth, end-to-end networks. The mark of 68,431 terabit-metres per second, which used the same IPv4 protocols deployed throughout the global Internet, was set by a team consisting of members from CERN and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The same team previously set a new mark of four Gbps

Grid Computing Steps up a Gear
UK plans for Grid computing changed gear this week. The pioneering European DataGrid (EDG) project came to a successful conclusion at the end of March, and on 1 April a new project, known as Enabling Grids for E-Science in Europe (EGEE), begins. The UK is a major player in both projects, providing key staff and developing crucial areas of the technology. While EDG tested the concept of large-scale Grid computing, EGEE aims to create a permanent, reliable Grid infrastructure across Europe.
More Computing Grid Current Events and Computing Grid News Articles


Grid Computing For Developers (Programming Series)
by Vladimir Silva

Learn the Future of Computing Today! Many industry analysts believe that Grid computing will be the next big wave in technology. It is so promising that major technology companies such as IBN, Microsoft, Oracle, and Sun are allocating significant quantities of resources for Grid research and development. A Developer’s Guide to Grid Computing explores the evolution of Grid computing from the...



Lessons in Grid Computing: The System Is a Mirror
by Stuart Robbins

"You should not overlook the potential genius in this concept." --Geoffrey Moore, consultant and author, Dealing with Darwin "Since he first identified 'information systems as mirrors of the people who build them' for me, I have seen it operate in many ways. It is a fascinating idea, and a completely new way of thinking about technology." --Sean Moriarty, Chief Operating Officer,...



The Grid 2: Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure (The Elsevier Series in Grid Computing)

The Grid is an emerging infrastructure that will fundamentally change the way we think about-and use-computing. The word Grid is used by analogy with the electric power grid, which provides pervasive access to electricity and has had a dramatic impact on human capabilities and society. Many believe that by allowing all components of our information technology infrastructure-computational...



Grid Computing: The Savvy Manager's Guide (The Savvy Manager's Guides)
by Pawel Plaszczak Jr.; Richard Wellner

Grid computing is a way of networking computers, databases, and applications together in such a way that large computing projects can be automatically parceled out to several small computers at once. By making use of idle machines in an office (or a variety of remote offices), grid computing creates a virtual supercomputer capable of processing huge applications and quantities of data that would...



Grid Computing Security
by Anirban Chakrabarti

Grid computing is widely regarded as a technology of immense potential in both industry and academia. Yet many enterprises are still hesitant about the implementation of an enterprise-level grid system, due to the lack of consistent and widely used standards. Security is probably the most important concern and needs both close understanding and careful implementation as grid computing offers...



Distributed and Parallel Systems: From Cluster to Grid Computing

Distributed and Parallel Systems: From Cluster to Grid Computing is an edited volume based on DAPSYS 2006, the 6th Austrian-Hungarian Workshop on Distributed and Parallel Systems, which is dedicated to all aspects of distributed and parallel computing. The workshop was held in conjunction with the 2nd Austrian Grid Symposium in Innsbruck, Austria in September 2006. Distributed and Parallel...



The Evolution of Grid Computing
by Juergen Hirtenfelder

"Divide et impera!" - The concept of subdividing complex monolithic tasks into simpler units of work is neither new nor IT-specific. But the basic idea behind grid computing would well be communicated by this ancient roman strategy. Today's IT-systems are sized for their peak-load. Pooling all available computing resources into a single set of services that can easily be scaled and shared among...



Grid Computing: Software Environments and Tools

Grid Computing requires the use of software that can divide and farm out pieces of a program to as many as several thousand computers. This book explores processes and techniques needed to create a successful Grid infrastructure. Leading researchers in Europe and the US look at the development of specialist tools and environments which will encourage the convergence of the parallel programming,...



Grid Computing: Making The Global Infrastructure a Reality

Grid computing is applying the resources of many computers in a network to a single problem at the same time Grid computing appears to be a promising trend for three reasons: (1) Its ability to make more cost-effective use of a given amount of computer resources, (2) As a way to solve problems that can't be approached without an enormous amount of computing power (3) Because it suggests that...



Enterprise Grid Computing with Oracle (Osborne Oracle Press)
by Brajesh Goyal, Shilpa Lawande

"This book is an excellent source of pragmatic guidance on how users can realize real benefits from adopting Grid Computing today while addressing their pressing business needs and leveraging their current IT investments." --Thomas Kurian, Senior Vice President, Oracle Server Technologies "Finally, here is a single reference point that articulates the business value and needs of Enterprise Grid...

© 2009 BrightSurf.com